Town Council Gets Small Raises in FY2014

The Chestertown Council passed 50 percent salary increase Monday for the Mayor and Council. The mayor’s salary will be $7,500, up from $5,000, and council seats will get $3,000, up from $2,000. The increases go into effect for the Mayor’s seat after the 2013 election, and the same applies for council seats held by Jim Gatto and Mabel Mumford. The seats currently held by Linda Kuiper and Marty Stetson will see raises after the 2015 election.

The vote passed by 4-1, with Mumford voting against because the amount was not enough.

Letters to Editor

Don’t get me wrong . . . I’m all in favor of public officials (including elected ones) receiving fair compensation.

But your headline and photo are misleading and your math is inaccurate. Those weren’t 30 percent increases the mayor and council voted themselves. The increases–$2500 for the mayor and $1000 for the council members–are half the base salary–$5000 and $2000 respectively; that’s a 50% increase.

And with U.S. median household income hovering around $53,000 (and declining in real value over the past 10 years), an increase of $1000 (about 2%) or $2500 (about 5%) would hardly be trivial.

So, those raises may have been “long overdue” or “well-deserved” or “woefully inadequate”, depending on your point of view; but “small” they were not.

Was waiting to see if anyone would mention the math was faulty. It is indeed correct to say the pay for each position was increased by 50 percent. @MBTroup, am assuming you are being sarcastic – and making an observation on the value we as taxpayers are receiving for our money, eh.
What was left out of the article – the salary to be received by the town manager position. If that were to be printed it would generate even MORE comment

When it comes to raises, most people would say that their 3% raise is based off the prior year number. So 50% is the commonly accepted number. I was just saying that 33% would have been defensible, since that his how margin is calculated in a price situation. But Dan admitted that 30 was a typo, so I won’t belabor it (too late for that!)